I’m curious. Whether the American’s were lying about WMD or not, why don’t they just plant the necessary evidence in Iraq? As far as I understand it, there are no independent bodies there to supervise their investigation, so what’s stopping America from taking stuff from their own stockpile and planting it in Iraq? Or building a whole slew of fake mobile weapon’s labs and distributing them across the country?
I’m not claiming to know a whole lot about the situation, so I ask my questions in ignorance. Please don’t jump on me for what you might consider an ‘obvious’ mistake in my reasoning.
Hopefully, what would stop them would be integrity.
More realisticly, “they” could fear potential embarassment in the future if it ever came out that the evidence was planted. Too many people would be in the know, and you can’t always count on all of them keeping their mouths shut.
Maybe it’s just dogged stubborness. “We WILL find weapons. There’s no need to plant them,” someone could be insisting.
Also, most Americans just don’t care that much. Either it’s forgotton why we went there in the first place, or they’ve been distracted by the notion that it doesn’t matter as long as we got rid of Saddam. The rest of the world may gripe as much as they like. The Powers That Be couldn’t care less: the rest of the world are not registered voters, and winning elections is what’s most important.
It’s not worth the risk. If there’s even a hint of foul play, then Bush is out of the white house. Why take that chance, when the polls say most people say it doesn’t matter if we find WMDs?
I believe it’s also possible for forensic scientists to take some WMDs (say, biological weapons), inspect them, determine what strain they’re from, and identify their country of origin as a result. It would be a really big embarassment for the U.S. if they “discovered” a huge cache of anthrax only to have UN scientists discover that it’s from a set that was only available in some North Dakota lab.
Of course, the easy way around it would be to prevent any independent investigations of the “discovered” WMDs, but that would give all the skeptics an even bigger stick to bludgeon the Administration with.
But this is what they’re currently doing anyway, right? They’ve already prevented independent investigation in the country, and I haven’t personally heard anyone imply that the US government planned to bring in an impartial third party upon finding the WMD.
I mean, couldn’t the most recently discovered WMDs be a (somewhat naive) example of this sort of tactic? These things could have easily been made and planted by the states, right? Just driven into Iraq from a neighbouring country. I mean, they weren’t really much more than mobile trailers right? There was no trace of actual biological or chemical weapons, so there was nothing to trace back.
Yeah, it is. It’s well over half, although I can’t seem to find the polls at the moment.
I think it’s a combination of factors:
People think Bush is fundamentally likeable. They want to believe him.
Apathy about the news in general. With the exciting explosion part over, the ratings for cable news have dipped again. Many are satisfied with ‘we went in, we won, end of story’. If the war (that is, the combat part) hadn’t gone so amazingly well, that sentiment would be far different.
Mass graves, children prisons, men condemned to die hiding under floorboards. In this age of television, you can see the skulls of babies being removed from a ditch in the ground. In front of that, it hardly seems to matter how or why Saddam was removed, just that he was.
Patience. People are aware that the UN had over a decade to deal with this problem; they don’t expect instant results.
What impartial third party would that be? I certainly can’t think of any.
The UN wants to cover their tacit support of Saddam. France would look foolish if WMD’s are found. Representatives from Arab Nations aren’t to be trusted. There are no impartial parties, except for those so-far removed that they can’t possibly be affected by this.
Which would be… maybe some small African nations?
Anyway, I’m pretty sure some of the UN teams are coming back, such as the nuclear watchdogs.
Ok, SimonX, you said: " As I understand it Iraq’s strains of biological weapons came from the US anyway. So just because they match the US’s stock wouldn’t mean much."
Just what the heck does that mean? Do you think that the US gave Saddam Hussein biological weapons so he could kill the Kurds? Other Iraqians? Iranians? Damn have balls, explain yourself.
“The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.”
Doesn’t the fact that they call anthrax a “biological virus” immediately show that their information might be a bit inaccurate? Their trying to convince me of some international conspiracy when they can’t be bothered to check a high school biology text book?
Because, whether or not Iraq had large amounts of WMDs in March 2003, there was a risk that they would acquire them and use them. It’s not disputed that Iraq had major chemical, biological, and nuclear programs in the past.
Furthermore, there were many other good reasons to favor Saddam’s overthrow – his cruelty, his support for mid-East terrorists, his hatred of America, his repeated violations of UN resolutions, his failure to honor his 1991 peace agreement, etc.